I have recently switched jobs/businesses and, with that, I have shifted from supervising middle-aged and experienced employees to younger employees (under 30).  Coupled with that, some of my former employees were owner-managers, which attaches with it pride of ownership, and my new employees are plain-old 9-5ers. I freely admit I am having a hard time adjusting.

Fundamentally, if you don’t have enough time under your belt, you don’t know instinctively what to do in the work-place. So I am having a lot of heart-to-heart discussions with my employees about expectation levels and how to make the boss (me) happy. This is what I am saying:

1. Learn to prioritize. Bosses, especially me, are notoriously bad at giving an employee an assignment and then not telling the employee when it is due. Then another supervisor gives the employee an assignment. Which one does the employee do first? The key is to ask what the priority is on the work given. If both supervisors say its “urgent” ask them to speak to each other to fight over the employee’s time.
2. Be pro-active. School is, in many respects, a passive environment. The student sits back and waits for the assignment, is told what to read and when to write the exams. Most office environments I know are not like that. You have be pro-active. Tell people you want work. What type of work you are looking for. What your interests are. If you don’t, you will disappear at work and become expendable.  No one baby-sits you in busy offices.
3. Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. This is related to #2. Tell your supervisor when you are done an assignment, that you are having trouble with it (see below) and you need feed-back on your work. If you do the work and then wait for the supervisor to find you to see how you have done, the supervisor thinks you are too passive.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When an employee gets an assignment they are having trouble with, they can do one of two things: (i) be seized up with fear and do nothing; or (ii) ask for help. The supervisor isn’t going to do the assignment for you but ask for a precedent to copy or a direction you should be going. Asking for help implicitly communicates you want to learn and you are interested as well.
5. Don’t pick and chose the “fun” jobs. Of course, you want to the fun jobs. Everyone does. But here’s the key to work. You get paid for the grief and not the work. Ever wonder what your boss does? They sit in the office mediating office politics, dealing with the Denise the Menace of the work-place and calling clients to collect the unpaid bills. Fun eh? Your boss got to be the boss by dealing with the grief. Show a positive attitude by volunteering to do a wide variety of things- the good, bad and ugly- and you will be respected by co-workers and thanked by supervisors.

Anyone care to share any advice for first time workers?

For those job seekers, Squawkfox has a great series running on resume writing this week (I post the first part).